


Stardust

by LavenderJam



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Affair era, Celestial Geography, F/M, Foreshadowing, Moonlight, Pre-Canon, Romance, Slow Dancing, this one hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:20:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28939863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LavenderJam/pseuds/LavenderJam
Summary: Asriel sat down beside her on the bench, his cufflinks glinting as he ran a hand through his hair. Their dæmons were embracing by the fountain, the monkey perched on the stone lip of the spring so that he could gaze into Stelmaria’s eyes, his deft fingers pulling pleasurably on her ears until the great creature purred.Marisa kept her eyes forward, staring up at the resplendent moon, though her crown tingled as Asriel studied her. “You look very, very beautiful,” he said, his voice deep and wonderfully rich. A smile spread across her face as he reached for her arm and pressed his lips to the back of her hand, his cupid’s bow skirting the violet channels of her veins. Then he kissed up the limb until his breath was warming her shoulder. “Magnificent,” he murmured into her skin.(A stolen moment between two lovers.)
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Comments: 29
Kudos: 47





	Stardust

**Author's Note:**

> “You could have told me the truth.”  
> “I wanted you to come and join me,” he said, his voice hoarse and quiet, “and I thought you would prefer a lie.”  
> “Yes," she whispered, “that’s what I thought.” - The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman 
> 
> “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,  
> in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” - XVII, Pablo Neruda
> 
> The piece of music I imagine them dancing to here is Debussy’s _Clair de Lune_ , which I listened to a lot while writing this. You might want to put it on, if you like reading with music :)

A mere hour ago, the ball had been thrumming with riotous laughter and the clink of champagne flutes and the drum of a hundred pairs of shoes on the ivory marble floor. Now, the clock’s hands were creeping towards midnight and a pleasant lull had blanketed the party, women reclining on velvet sofas with their nightcaps while their husbands smoked poppy and sipped whiskey in the lavish lounges down the hall. Edward had pressed a brusque kiss to her cheek before becoming one of those husbands, his hand dusting her hip as he melted into a crowd of his colleagues, a crystal tumbler already shoved into his hand. She’d waved him away with a serene smile, then slipped out of the manor’s great oak doors and made her way to the rose garden.

The white petals were luminous in the moonlight, the only sounds the faint chatter spooling from the ballroom’s open windows and the twinkling of the fountain that stood before her. The sculpted hedgerows loomed above her in the darkness, obscuring the garden from the manor’s balconies, and as Marisa took a seat on a nearby bench, the wrought iron black as soot, she knew that not a soul would find her here, unless they had a reason to be looking.

They’d been orbiting each other all evening, binary stars fated never to meet but whose gravity depended on the other’s faithful presence nonetheless, her eyes catching his for mere seconds as her husband twirled her around the dancefloor, the sound of his laugh perforating her eardrums even as other attendees attempted to engage her in conversation. When she’d selected another glass of champagne from the waiter’s gleaming silver tray, he’d been across the room at the bar ordering something stronger, and when she’d been batting her eyelashes at Edward’s latest political project, he’d been making idle conversation with a harem of adoring young women, his dæmon pacing impatiently before him, her emerald eyes anchored to the flash of gold fur by Marisa’s feet. She hadn’t looked for him before she’d extricated herself from the melee, for she knew it was needless: they were two magnets being held apart by cruel manacles, and now that their restraints had been lifted, however briefly, there was nothing more to do than wait for the inevitable collision.

She’d only been relishing the cool night breeze for a few minutes when the sound of paws padding over paving slabs wended its way into her ears. He stepped out into the clearing not a moment later, the bright white of his dress shirt glowing like the creamy rose petals, his dinner jacket slung over his shoulder, Stelmaria’s silver coat glittering beneath the moonbeams.

Marisa turned to him, the faintest smile on her face. She’d dressed with him in mind, and her pulse quickened as his gaze swept over her body, the midnight blue silk of her ballgown elegant and inviting, her shoulders and décolletage milky in the soft light, her breasts like two polished pearls as the strapless bodice pressed them together and raised them towards him. Her earrings were diamond droplets, hanging from her lobes like two precious tears. Edward had questioned the outfit, his eyebrows raising at the sight of her sweetheart neckline and bare shoulders, but even he could not deny that she looked radiant, and he’d been unable to mask his delight as his colleagues had swarmed the two of them, pressing their lips to her knuckles before introducing themselves to her husband. She was intimately familiar with this dance, of course – no doubt she could perform it blindfolded after so many repetitions – but there was something unexpectedly unpleasant about this leering throng enjoying a gift she’d so painstakingly created for another, each lick of the lips a reminder that who exactly showered her with adoration was not as inconsequential as she’d been raised to believe.

Asriel sat down beside her on the bench, his cufflinks glinting as he ran a hand through his hair. Their dæmons were embracing by the fountain, the monkey perched on the stone lip of the spring so that he could gaze into Stelmaria’s eyes, his deft fingers pulling pleasurably on her ears until the great creature purred.

Marisa kept her eyes forward, staring up at the resplendent moon, though her crown tingled as Asriel studied her. “You look very, very beautiful,” he said, his voice deep and wonderfully rich. A smile spread across her face as he reached for her arm and pressed his lips to the back of her hand, his cupid’s bow skirting the violet channels of her veins. Then he kissed up the limb until his breath was warming her shoulder. “Magnificent,” he murmured into her skin.

“Thank you,” she said. His forelock brushed against her cheek as he planted kisses on her collarbone. She hummed.

“Are you enjoying the ball?” she said.

He gave a low chuckle. “I am now,” he said, pulling back to look at her again, one hand still gracefully stroking her bare throat.

She felt a blush flood her chest and sighed, leaning her head against his, one of her crystal hairpins pressing against his temple and leaving an indent. He draped an arm across her shoulders and let his hand dangle down to her bust, his knuckles brushing lazily against the soft silk covering her breast. They listened to the fountain babbling and the gentle swish of leaves in the breeze, the waning buzz of the party almost forgotten. “It really is quite tranquil here, isn’t it?” she said. “Much more so than the city.”

He nodded. “Clearer too,” he said, craning his neck up to appreciate the skyscape.

The night sky was faultless, an unblemished sheet of obsidian, and dotted with uncountable brilliant stars, twinkling like Marisa’s diamond earrings in the moonlight. “I haven’t seen a sky like this since I was last on Svalbard,” he said.

“It’s beautiful.” She gazed up at the stars as he pressed kisses to her jawbone. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Gemini from Brytish soil.”

“Point it out to me,” he said, his fingers sliding into her chignon.

“You know where it is,” she said, rolling her eyes, though she still angled her neck so that he could better access her nape.

“I want you to remind me.” He began pulling out her hairpins as she raised her hand to the sky and traced the constellation with one manicured finger.

“Show me another,” he said. Her curls began to fall to her shoulders as she drew his gaze to Pegasus and Draco and Hercules, and by the time she’d run out of constellations to offer him his hands were buried in her hair, raking his nails across her scalp until she moaned. The destruction of her updo released a bloom of perfume into the air around them, and the jasmine and sandalwood mixed decadently with the natural fragrance of the rose garden. Asriel nuzzled her hair with his nose and sighed. Marisa kept her eyes anchored to the sky, her pupils reflecting the cold gleam of the moon.

“It can’t just be us, can it?” she said.

“What?”

“There must be other beings out there, don’t you think?” she said, leaning into his touch. “Other worlds, other lives. In a universe this vast, it seems madder not to think so…”

“Careful,” he teased. “That sounds dangerously close to something I might say.”

She smiled and went quiet. He let the silence sit for a moment, but couldn’t stop himself continuing. “There was a time when saying that the Earth was round was cause for excommunication,” he said. “When saying that this planet revolved around the Sun was heresy. I wonder what the Magisterium will accept as divine truth a hundred years from now that one might be hanged for today.” He shook his head. “People have given their lives to enlighten us, to chase away the darkness, as if that were a crime. But there’s only so long the truth can be denied. Even by them.”

“Intangibility remains the downfall of experimental theology,” she said. “Mathematics will always be weak evidence to those who lack the intellect to grasp it.” She sighed, her gaze scouring the neat depressions of the lunar landscape, marvelling that the moon’s shadows were so deep and dark that even hundreds of thousands of miles could not obscure them. “Imagine,” she said, “if they could have flown an airship past the stratosphere all those centuries ago, and taken a photogram of the Earth, created an incontrovertible impression of its curves. It would be hard to deny what people could see with their own eyes, wouldn’t it?” She laced her fingers with his. “Imagine standing up there, reaching the surface of the moon and looking down. Imagine walking out into the sky.” 

He held her closer. “Who says that we couldn’t?”

“You and I?”

“Why not?” He kissed her crown. “We could start a new civilisation, you and I, together. Be the only two people in the world. Leave the tedium of this place behind.”

“That would be a rather short-lived society, wouldn’t it? Extinction is hardly a legacy of which to be proud.”

“Alright. We’ll populate it as best our bodies can manage,” he said, and she shivered. He stroked her arm with a chuckle. “We’ll fill it with our children and leave it to them, to live free from tyranny. They’ll live and love and die as they so choose, looking down upon the Earth all the while, reminded of the darkness from which we fought to free them.”

“Sounds terribly dull, now that you’ve described it. What would one _do_ in a world without obstructions?”

He kissed her. “Let’s find out,” he said, smiling into her mouth, and she fastened her lips to his with equal passion, his face clasped between her palms.

They kissed in the darkness, the soft smack of their lips a pleasant complement to the trickle of the fountain, their dæmons peering into the stone basin and admiring the way their reflections rippled together into a bronze blur. They were still entwined on the bench when the silky tones of a piano began to fall from the windows, the notes floating on the breeze until they reached the rose garden. Asriel broke off the kiss and looked up towards the manor. He smiled and stood, pulling her with him.

He tried to clasp her in his arms but Marisa stepped back, hesitating. She glanced up at the great house. “I should get back – ”

“No. You should stay right here, with me.” 

He stood there, hand outstretched, his fierce eyes boring into hers. The contrast of his white skin and shirt and the dark shock of his hair was striking: he was a masterpiece in monochrome, ethereal, almost, a marble statue who might as well have been carved just for her. She found it hard to deny him at the best of times, but with their pale skin and dark clothes and glimmering accoutrements melding them into the landscape, every inch of him and her and the sky and the water and the garden a swirl of blue-black and silver and iridescent cream, it felt like rebuffing him now might well have been her cruellest act yet, even this wraithlike pocket of seclusion not enough for her to truly give herself to him without a reminder that she was also bound to another. She flowed into his arms. “One song.”

He placed his hands on her hips and she gently clasped his neck in her palms, and they began to sway together under the stars. She waited for him to guide them both around the fountain in something at least vaguely resembling a set of rhythmic steps, but after a minute of him rocking her in his arms, it became clear that his vision of this activity was different to the moves that had been drilled into her at finishing school. He seemed content to simply hold her, the tinkling of the piano keys merging with the peals of the water to create a sickening expanse of serenity. It only took a minute for her to melt into him, resting her head on his shoulder while they moved together beneath the moon.

His hands stroked the silk of her dress as if he was tracing the lines of a delicate manuscript, displaying as much reverence as she thought Asriel could ever hope to summon from the dry well of it within him. One of his hands slid into her hair, his thumb stroking the nape of her neck, and her eyes began to water. She pressed her face into his chest so that he couldn’t see, though a small stain began to form over his left breast as a few wayward tears escaped from beneath her firmly closed lids. She felt him swallow.

As abruptly as it had begun, the music came to an end, the final note settling in her stomach like a stone. He continued to twirl with her, but his swaying became more stilted, as if he was primed for her to pull away, and doing his best to brace himself for the stark empty space he’d soon find between his arms. She said nothing and held him tighter, returning some momentum to their pale imitation of a dance.

“The song’s over,” he murmured into her hair.

She met his eyes, hers still coated with a melancholy sheen. “No, it isn’t,” she said. “Can’t you still hear the music?”

A smile unfurled across his face. “My mistake,” he said. “Of course I can.”

“Good.” She pressed her cheek against his breast again, the smooth beat of his heart combining with the patter of the fountain and the whoosh of the trees to create another kind of symphony.

They swayed together in the rose garden for a long while, the stars only brightening as the night deepened. They became so lost in the rhythm they’d created together that the rest of the world fell away, and the manor and the ball and her husband might well have been abstract concepts, as absurd as Asriel’s fanciful vision of launching a zeppelin out of the atmosphere and making a life with her in a new world all their own. But of course, bequests can take many forms, and as they danced together, feeling like the only two people in the world, both were unaware that a mere week ago a cell of his and a cell of hers had collided so violently that a single structure had been formed, the embryo now dividing rapidly inside her, two cells and then four and then eight and beyond, the inaugural moments of a shared legacy that would outstrip even their most extravagant dreams. Though they never would quite manage to start a new life among the stars, a new star was still going to start her life among them.

**Author's Note:**

> In the comments of my fic _Forgive Me_ , @lyracordeila and @chasinglovers mentioned that they liked the idea of Marisa and Asriel sneaking off to slow dance together, and the idea just grabbed me. I hope this scratches that itch! As always, comments are lovely, so please feel free to let me know your thoughts :)


End file.
